Licensing Question

[djones2002]

Hello All.

I am just getting my feet wet for the first time with Linux, having been a Windows Enterprise Admin (Don't hit me!!) for several years and have a question about licensing, so please forgive me if this is the wrong forum. The Linux kernel is supposed to be free, given the GNU license agreement, correct? If so, what are companies like Red Hat charging for when they sell Enterprise Server products? Is there extended functionality that is proprietary to Red Hat in the code?

Any help you can provide is appreciated.

 

[Morsing]

There are different aspects of this. Linux is not free as in 'free of charge' (not neccessarily anyway).
By free is meant open. This means that the source code has to be distributed with the software and that you have the right to change the software as long as it is still open.

RedHat takes money for putting it on a CD. They're not charging any licencing fees and you're not agreeing to anything by buying and using RedHat Linux (I think).

That being said, the installation and configuration software from RedHat, I believe, is under different licencing than GPL.

If you change something in Linux it's your right to charge money for this and sell it to others if you wish. You're just not allowed to keep the source of the changes to your self.

So, 'free' just means 'open' or 'source code included'.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[Norwich]

Further, Redhat and many other distros will add support to the 'sold' package - so the cost is effectively paying for support. This is specifically the case with the new enterprise version of redhat. You can still download it for free though and get help via the community rather than pay directly for it.

There are companies that will burn these downloaded distros for you and sell on the Cds for a few quid/dollars (totally legitimate). The only thing with the redhat burns like this is that redhat don't want their name being used directly on these Cds so they will invariably be called something like 100% redhat compatable.

See

http://www.cheeplinux.com

http://www.cheapbytes.com

etc

 

[BitFuzzy]

The GPL which the Linux Kernel is developed, states that you can pretty much do what ever you want with the item (in this case linux kernel) providing you provide its sources.

see

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

for the full defination of "free software"

The Linux community as a whole has adopted a "free" release stragity with usually means you can download "free of charge" or Purchase a cd. (The same cd sets can be burned by you utilizing their ISO, or you can go to various web sites and get legimitate cd's for under 10.00

All Linux distrobutions utilize the same Kernel, so in some respects they are similar, but do have their underlying differences.

*what are companies like Red Hat charging for when they sell Enterprise Server products?

I can't answer this question as I do not use RH nor am I familuar with their "Enterprise Server" but I did just try to obtain information on this (greedy little monkeys aren't they) it seems to me with the right installs you should beable to reproduce whatever they're doing w/ just about any distrobution of Linux.